Alessandro ‘bipolare’: il filosofo e il conquistatore nelle fonti della Seconda Sofistica

Francesca Piccioni

2024-01-01

---

Abstract

Within the varied framework of the reception of Alexander the Great, this work aims to delve into his treatment by the authors of the Second Sophistic. Ancient sources generally offer a contrasting characterization of him, as a 'philosopher in arms' and an unbridled conqueror, with his two facies mostly coexisting in the same author and work. This chiaroscuro treatment is also found in deuterosophistic Greek sources (Dion of Prusa, Lucian). This article reflects, investigating the reasons, on the inconsistency between the usual duality traceable in Greek sources and the coherently positive image detectable instead on the Latin coté of the Second Sophistic (Apuleius, Aulus Gellius); this neatly differs from an extremely negative tradition consolidated in Rome, from Cicero to Seneca. In addition to the plausible socio-political and cultural motivations, we consider the use of sources, postulating that Pliny the Elder, the basis of both Apuleian and Gellian text, always on the edge between scientific curiosity and a taste for anecdotes and mirabilia, imposed in Rome his point of view about Alexander the Great as a conqueror pushed not by a lust for power but for knowledge.